Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power [Hardcover]

This is the first major life of Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) since W. A. Swanberg's 1967 biography, but it's far more than merely an updated portrait. Its two-fold achievement is to restore a giant figure in the history of American journalism, business, and politics--a man who's been half-lost to modern memory apart from the prize that he created and that bears his name--and to report, for the first time, the whole truth about several fascinating episodes and key facets of Pulitzer's life. It's a stunning, at times mind-blowing biography that wears its heroic research and enterprising detective work lightly.

In its late 19th/early 20th century heyday, Pulitzer's New York World had the combined national clout and prestige of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post rolled into one. With today's newspaper industry enduring a profound crisis of confidence and authority in the face of economic crisis and a new-media onslaught, this is an ideal moment to revisit the story of the man who, more than any other, created modern journalism, and became the first fantastically wealthy, world-spanning press lord.

Given the brisk pacing, swift narrative momentum, and often-thrilling drama of this biography, it's impossible not to think of the movies while reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power. Thanks in large part to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, we're much more familiar with the story of William Randolph Hearst, Pulitzer's upstart rival, than we are with Pulitzer. But in James McGrath Morris's telling, Welles might as well have based his great film on Pulitzer. It has the same outlines of a young man's meteoric rise--Pulitzer was a Hungarian Jew who arrived in America penniless and friendless--and of a crusading idealist's gradual transformation into a bitter, isolated, self-pitying plutocrat. (Once a rags-to-riches champion of social justice and the poor, Pulitzer later mercilessly crushed a strike called by impoverished street-urchin newsboys.) But just when you begin to recoil from the contemptible figure Pulitzer has become, this biography unfolds the riveting story of the clash between Pulitzer's World, which reported on alleged corruption in the building of the Panama Canal, and an enraged President Theodore Roosevelt, who unleashed the full legal might of the federal government in an attempt to convict and imprison Pulitzer for criminal libel. It's like a Gilded-Age version of All the President's Men, except the commander-in-chief is relentlessly stalking the journalists instead of the other way around. Amazingly, this crucial episode in the history of the First Amendment, freedom of the press, and abuse of presidential power has never been fully told, but James McGrath Morris (who resorted to the threat of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to uncover government records that had been hidden for a century) gives us the complete blow-by-blow story. Lastly, I couldn't help recalling The Aviator and the strange life of Howard Hughes (as it happens, director Martin Scorsese is James McGrath Morris's brother-in-law) while reading how Pulitzer was suddenly struck with blindness at the pinnacle of his power, turning into a phobic, self-pitying recluse who railed against his wife and family, tormented servants, couldn't endure the slightest noise, and spent decades restlessly cruising the world in ocean liners and giant yachts in flight from his demons.

Joseph Pulitzer had a life full of contradictions, triumphs, and tragedy, and it's all here, from the terrible flaws to the giant achievements. Pulitzer created the model of crusading journalism as a pillar of democracy. And despite his many lapses, he also established an ideal of accuracy, truthfulness, and disinterested fairness that to this day characterizes the best reporting. This is essential reading for every journalist and a treasure trove for every student of American history.

Joseph Pulitzer's story is a classic American rags-to-riches-to-sellout saga. A Jewish immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer made his way in the rough-and-tumble newspaper business of Missouri after the Civil War. Allying his newspapers with the "little man" against the big shots, Pulitzer invented the irreverent, aggressive, sensational daily press of America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Becoming fabulously wealthy himself, Pulitzer abandoned his allegiance to the little man and his newspapers ossified. Suffering blindness from two detached retinas, Pulitzer descended into eccentricities, depression, and a sharp alienation from his family.

James McGrath Morris tells this exciting and cautionary story with great judgment and wit. At a time when our own media seem to have lost their way -- gutless broadcast news, shrinking print media, immature Internet vehicles -- the time is ripe for someone to refashion how we learn about the world, and how we think about it, the way Pulitzer did. It's a terrific book -- read it.

In the style of Ron Chernow and Jeane Strouse, James McGrath Morris has provided a robust and sterling account of one of the most important, yet very complicated giants in American history. In the hands of this sublime biographer the tale of Hungarian-born Joseph Pulitzer leaps in grand fashion from each page as we follow Pulitzer across the Atlantic in 1864 and then are whisked through a life that saw its fair share of triumphs and tragedies. While most people know of the award that bears his name, readers will find on these pages that Pulitzer was more than a newspaperman turned mogul, a man driven with ambition to whatever endeavor or cause he pursued. Utilizing sources never before mined Morris literally fleshes out the life of Pulitzer not only within the context of his times but with a nuanced and balanced portrait of Pulitzer the mortal, a man who could easily turn on the charm, win your trust, but could also be a nefarious liar. Chronicling his ascent to power and fame in the arena of nascent modern journalism readers will no doubt have mixed emotions as Puiltzer descends into severe neurosis and lonliness, making his life all the more tragic. A must read, PULITZER: A LIFE IN POLITICS, PRINT, AND POWER, belongs alongside the recent monumental biographies that have been penned about the pantheon of greats including J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.